ForProfitEDU.com Launches its Annual Lead Generation Benchmarking Survey Online. Employees & Executives at colleges who are members of the higher education community are invited to participate in this annual bench marking study to identify current trends and best practices in lead generation, advertising compliance & marketing

Monday, January 9th 2012 – New York, NY – ForProfitEDU.com announced today the launch of its Annual Lead Generation Benchmarking survey for the Higher Education sector. The survey, which is open to individuals that are directly involved with marketing in higher education, will examine where schools are focusing their online marketing efforts, what tools and tactics are most effective, and what challenges exist in this area. All survey participants may register to receive a free report with the results of the survey upon completion. According to BMO Capital Markets Equity Research, sales and marketing expenses can run above 30% of revenues for the majority of companies in the for-profit education space, with a growing proportion of that spend happening in online marketing. Despite this, there are very few objective resources that marketers in the education market can reference to get a better handle on the use of online marketing in the sector.

This survey will offer a clear set of benchmarks, while identifying current trends and best practices for marketing professionals.  When you complete this survey, you will be able to enter our sweepstakes for a chance to win a $100 Amazon.com Gift Card!

The survey takes approximately 5 minutes to complete, and can be accessed online at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2012collegeadvertisingandmarketingsurvey

It will be open to respondents until March 15, 2012 and a report on the results will be made available to participants by the end of March. Must be currently employed or within last 6 months employed with a school or responsible for the exclusive advertising and/ or lead buying for a school.  All survey entries will be screened and validated!

About ForProfitEDU.com

ForProfitEDU.com is a leading website resource & Networking group (7000+ members) for all those who work within, around or are interested in the For-Profit EDU industry. The site offers networking, research, consulting, news updates and commentary from members of the For-Profit EDU community. Contributors include those from the school side, as well as those that work at related services firms including the investment community (investors, analysts, venture firms & PE firms), marketing & advertising professionals, educators & curriculum development, career services & other related service providers. ForProfitEDU also provides research and consulting services to schools & other service firms within the industry. Areas of expertise include Advertising, Lead generation, Marketing Strategy & Execution, Admissions, M&A, Raising capital, Market research and Partnering to create & grow online schools.

ForProfitEDU would like to extend an exclusive invitation to you to attend The Capital Roundtable’s conference on Private Equity Investing in For-Profit Education Companies, being held on Thursday, January 12 in New York City.

As a partner, we have the privilege to put your name on our VIP list, allowing you to register for a special rate of $995 — $400 off the standard registration price.

This day-long conference is being chaired by Chris Hoehn-Saric, Senior Managing Director at Sterling Partners, and features 20 experts.

For registration or inquiries, just call Anna Fagan at 212-832-7300 ext. 0, or email her at afagan@capitalroundtable.com. Please be sure to mention our name”ForProfitEDU.com”.

For more details, click link below:
http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/Capital-Roundtable-For-Profit-Education-Private-Equity-Conference-2012.html

I hope to see you on January 12 for what promises to be a great day.

Have a Wonderful Holiday!

P.S. Since we expect this conference to attract a strong attendance, please register as soon as possible to reserve your seat.

Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (“APSCU”) has put out a memorandum giving guidance for the Misrepresentation rule and Third party vendors.

Internet brings many assets to higher education. As with multiple other industries, however, the misuse of the Internet can have harmful consequences for consumers and organizations. With the possibility of so many different entities involved in online student recruitment, APSCU felt it both appropriate and important to provide its members with this guidance.

Click Here to view Memo

After many discussions with some of the top aggregators & lead providers it became clear that most noted a lack in demand by the major schools.  This softness in demand seems to be continuing from the first 8 months of the year by the major EDU players. Not all lead providers indicating lack of demand, a select few of the highest quality providers tell us that the demand for their leads (even at the higher prices) continues to be strong.

Vendors have noted schools being slow to test new campaigns, delays in providing campaign approvals, and restrictions pertaining to taking on new partners/affiliates.

For most schools the demand for leads softened last year and has continued thus far this year.  Many site internal changes, program changes, more emphasis on direct acquisition, branding compliance fears as well as internal admissions process changes.

ForProfitEdu.com is pleased to announce a Special opportunity for a Free trial of the CareerMotivations Assessment for its Members.  This opportunity is open to the first 10 Colleges that inquire and get started.  CareerMotivations is a fully validated assessment (University of Minnesota did the validation study) and over 7,000,000++ have taken the assessment.  In essence a person takes the assessment and it tells them which career paths (US govt. data Onet) they are most motivated to enjoy & succeed in.  It provides them with their learning styles, motivational qualities & which corresponding degree programs (available at your colleges) are a best match for them based on Govt. CIP code (Classification of Instructional Programs). It also provides the most recent Government data as to the career description, the employment outlook for that career path, related career paths, as well as salary information.

The tool is customized for each school/system, CareerMotivations enters all of the schools specific programs (CIP codes) and the school tells us what questions to ask on the registration (this becomes a valuable lead).  Then the user takes the assessment and when completed they can see the matches to each of the school’s programs as well as all of the government descriptions around each of them.   The report data is incredibly easy to understand yet detailed and the relationship & trust the admissions representative can have with the potential student and family is unmatched.   In essence, it provides a new low cost means of generating interested students, a strong bond and value created with admissions and a greater likelihood the student enrolls in the correct program (thus more likely to graduate), not to mention it shows the world that the school cares about each student individually and makes efforts to help the student make wise choices with accurate information.

Additional benefits over time include the ability to identify specific motivational traits & learning styles which tend to align with students who graduate as well as those students who drop.  Once these are identified, schools can utilize this information on intake to determine the appropriate degree path for the student and which ones may need additional attention from student management to help them graduate.

Schools thus far, have been interested in adding this to their website for increased inquiry generation, utilization in recirculation email campaigns to regenerate students from old leads and in social media & TV advertising to increase return on their advertising.

If you are interested in the Free Trial please contact us: http://www.careermotivations.com/contact-us/

CareerMotivations and ForprofitEDu are non related entities, if your firm has a special offer for the 5000+ member of forprofitedu.com group please contact us

With all that’s going on with regards to compliance and schools taking more and more time to be selective in who they work with, will aggregators eventually give in to transparency?  This topic is one of many heated discussions.  I have been to multiple edu marketing  panels with the who’s who of the major edu aggregators and it seems to be split.  Some of them say that if forced to they will come around and identify all of their sources, others however refuse to and say they will never disclose every source for their leads.  They believe their lead quality speaks for itself and don’t believe transparency is necessary.   Well these firmare very protective of their sources and they do not want to be open for cannibalization, but if there is some type of vendor protection why can’t there be complete transparency.  Some believe its because of the use of call center generated leads which continue to be tossed into the pile of Internet generated leads for many of the lead providers both at the top and bottom of the food chain.  I think schools have the right to know where the leads are comming from PROVIDED they protect the lead sources from their vendors, non-circumvention, non-disclosure etc should help provide this protection.  Many of the most astute schools will agree to this in order to get the transparency they want.  What do you think?

June 2, 2011

Join us for our 3rd annual conference showcasing leading companies in the Advertising & Marketing Services sector. The conference will focus on trends in technology and consumer behavior and their impact.

3rd annual advertising & marketing services conference Grand Hyatt • Park Avenue at Grand Central • New York City

Education Marketing Moderator: Tom Ferrara, Creator of ForProfitEDU.com & CEO of FF Ventures

Ad Venture Interactive, Mike McHugh, COO

Avenue100 Media Solutions, Brian Eberman, CEO

EducationDynamics, Steve Issac,Co-Founder & Senior Advisor

The CollegeBound Network, Greg O’Brien, CEO

Link to the Agenda:  http://www.bmocm.com/conferences/showAgenda.aspx?id=325

Link to registration: https://www.meetmax.com/sched/event_9091/investor_reg_new.html?cmd=register&event_id=9091

BMO conferences are consistently some of the best events every year, usually standing room only with the industry’s top companies and executives, if you can be there, GO!

Over the last few years there have been tremendous amount of conversations over the need for and value of lead scoring.  While companies such as targus have secured  nice subscription based revenue models by charging for lead scoring service many don’t find them as necessary.  In the beginning vendors dismissed the value and accuracy of lead scoring as clearly they dented the “valid lead” pile.  Arguments ensued as to how you can say the lead is not valid when the data is accurate and the person initiated the action of requesting info from the schools.  Others claimed it was the equivalent of profiling and thus prevented equal access.

With the gainful employment regulations pending many more schools looked into it as they felt compelled to target a higher level (financially) demographic for fear the other could not afford an education.  Once again leave it to the Govt. to create rules that negatively effect those who need it the most… but I digress…

The results of the 2011 EDU survey showed that only 8.3%  considered lead scoring extremely valuable and 22.6% found it valuable.  Which means 70% don’t see much value or importance in it, especially for 2011.  While I am sure that targus folk will differ and many may be in arms regarding this post, we are simply reporting what the schools and industry responded in the 2011 EDU advertising and marketing survey!

Based on our survey of over 200 EDU Advertising and Marketing professionals it seems clear that only about half of the schools plan on increasing their lead budgets in 2011 over 2010 spends.  While most blame lack of quality lead sources others blame decreasing lead quality partially due to the increased use of call center generated leads by third party lead providers.  Regardless of the reason it marks the first year in many where less than 60% of the schools were actively looking to increase their lead buying.